An Admirer

A short, creepy game with a conversational interface of the kind I rarely see in Inform, much less 4-hour speed games, so that deserves praise on its own. The principal antagonist is great. Love it.

Thoughts on the story:

(Spoiler - click to show)I thought of parasites from the opening line, probably because my own Ectocomp entry was about parasites. On reading farther it seems to be a bodysnatcher situation specifically, where the entity eventually replaces you entirely. Based on those lines about "the scent of your heart" and "the sound of your blood moving", it starts off growing somewhere inside your body and eventually replaces you. Maybe it hijacks your muscles, leading to with a puppetry situation where it's controlling you while you're paralyzed inside your own body. Or maybe it grows into the tender fatty cells of your cerebellum and kills off your consciousness, so you never see yourself become a living corpse. I mean, we've got options here. Wonder which would be worse. On the one hand you might end up completely trapped, watching from within as something that isn't you commandeers your body for the rest of your life... on the other hand, if that's the case you'd at least still be alive. Maybe you could even try to negotiate. Maybe I'm making stuff up. Anyone remember Aftran from Animorphs?

I'm a fan of this one because I'm biased towards parasites. You can hardly get more intimate or deadly than having a "something" living inside you, squirming around in your guts, knotting up your neurons... Didn't someone say love is also a parasitism? Growing in your brain, a disease with a possibly-unwilling carrier? Am I making stuff up again? The parasite in this case resembles an abusive or jilted lover, demanding more than you can give, resenting that you can't give it all, always wanting more. An all-consuming love interlaced with a love of consumption. Devouring someone from the inside out.

You don't want that to happen to you. Obviously.